True Crime Vault: Manhunt
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Hi, everybody. It's Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of 2020. We're bringing you more 2020 each week with the 2020 True Crime Vault. That's right. You're going to hear a story pulled from our archives, shows that we just can't seem to get out of our heads. And we think you're going to be drawn in, too. Thanks for listening. Coming up. Important message from the New York State Police. The search continues for two men who escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility. These men are considered armed.

armed hundreds of officers in a massive manhunt. They are killers, they are murderers. Escape from Dannemora. You're really starting with two people who have no trail. It's like chasing a ghost. 23 days and nights of terror with two cold-hearted killers on the loose. If you wanted to take a picture of the devil, that's the face that you would see. Desperate convicts who don't feel pain.

Literally. He's a freaking crazy lunatic maniac. And don't mind causing it. He's a monster. There's some sort of chemical imbalance in his head.

Planning their escape for months, a crash diet to fit through a tiny tunnel, hacksaws smuggled in ground beef to dig their way out of a fortress. You look at that and you say, how did this happen? How did this happen in this facility? Could it have been seducing a prison guard to help him escape? I'm thinking, Joyce Mitchell, what are you thinking?

We follow the trail out in the field and in the forest. You could run into a bear's den any place. You could run into multiple wild animals. Retracing the desperate steps of the killers with the men who led the charge. He's yelling, stop.

yelling, come out. Chilling details. Matt's attitude was we have to kill or rob somebody. That's what we should do. In the real locations. The campsite hideout in the woods. So that changed everything. Finding their DNA in this cabin. How it all played out step by step. Kept the pressure all the way from the Canadian border south. And the final dramatic showdown for a high stakes capture. Cook knew immediately I've got the right guy. It's on.

I'm John Quinones. It was a drama that unfolded over three heart-pounding weeks. Two inmates, their escape from prison so audacious it played out like a movie, with meticulous preparation, help from the inside, even a romance.

But as the weeks wore on, the perfect plan of Richard Matt and David Sweat began to fall apart. A missed connection and clues carelessly left behind kept authorities hot on their heels. And the question became, could the two men united in escape hold it together in their life on the lambs?

As Gio Benitez first reported in 2015, tensions would mount, an alliance would fracture, and only one man would live to tell the tale. It's the first June weekend in the scenic Adirondacks region of New York, a summer playground. But this relaxing Saturday is about to become an overtime workday for Major Charles Guest of the New York State Police. I was sound asleep. I got a phone call at about 6.06 a.m.

Guess heads to Dannemora, a one-horse town whose lifeblood is one mammoth building: the hulking Clinton Correctional Facility.

Outside, 5,000 residents. Inside, 3,000 prisoners. And overnight, that population has just been lowered by two. They had two unaccounted-for inmates at this point, which is a problem in and of itself. A total breach had been made of the perimeter, so we knew that the unaccounted-for prisoners had become two escapees at large. Finding the men will be Major Guest's problem. Keeping the local community safe, that's the job of Clinton County Sheriff David Favreau. Didn't believe it, though.

Really? My response to the text was, this isn't funny on a Saturday morning. It's no joke. Two convicted murderers have escaped from Clinton, a legendary prison where the worst of the worst are dispatched. I'm not doing time. In the past, there were the likes of notorious gangster Lucky Luciano, seen here portrayed in Boardwalk Empire. Let him spill the beans.

And until this spring day, there were two modern-day depraved criminals, Richard Matt, who murdered and mutilated his former boss, and David Sweat, a heartless cop killer. Governor Andrew Cuomo rushes to the scene worried. Nobody's busted out of Clinton in 100 years.

Officials show the governor the trail of the escape. It was elaborate. It was sophisticated. It encompassed drilling through steel walls and steel pipes. So this was not easily accomplished. We now know the breakout has been months in the making. Way back in January, David Sweat makes a New Year's resolution to relocate. He begins sawing through the walls of his cell using a smuggled hacksaw blade.

All they used was the hacksaw blades to get out, so that would make sense on the length of time that it took them to do it. By February, he has methodically cut through the steel wall of his cell, three-eighths of an inch thick, and continues carving through the wall of his next-door neighbor too, Richard Matt. Were they clean holes? They were. There's an air duct vent in each of these cells. They cut out around the air duct.

removed it and they're large enough for a person the size of Matt or Sweat to get through. And so behind those cells there's some sort of corridor, right? A catwalk. Yeah, it's a catwalk that goes through the length of the back of the cells and there are four different tiers.

Night after night, after guards finish bed checks, Sweat freely wanders those catwalks, descending into the bowels of the prison. He finds a hammer a workman left behind and uses it to knock through a brick wall, discovering on the other side a 24-inch heating pipe which leads underneath the 30-foot prison wall. The plan? No!

Open the pipe and crawl to freedom, just like Tim Robbins' character in "The Shawshank Redemption." Sweat and Matt joke that though it took Robbins 20 years in the movie, they will only need 10. As it turns out, it will be far less. Sweat was down there multiple nights.

And he did most of the work. And they cut through the pipes. They were just persistent. And fastidious, too. A fan hooked up to electricity in the tunnel keeps him from getting too sweaty. A second set of clothes from getting too dusty while cutting through that heating pipe.

By May, as the weather warms, the blistering steam is shut off. Meanwhile, the stocky Matt goes on a crash diet, so he's skinny enough to slither through their escape route. To get through the pipe, which was less than two feet in diameter, and to get through the wall that they broke, he had to lose weight. And even then, Sweat says he had difficulty getting through.

By that night in June, it's all systems go. They execute their plan to perfection. They come out of the pipe near a manhole cover and emerge on the street a block from the prison. They leave behind a twisted calling card. This tiny note. "Have a nice day." And there's that taunting message they left behind. "Have a nice day." It's an insult, obviously, to us. And where will the killers go?

The prison is located in the densely wooded, extreme northeast corner of New York State. The Canadian border is less than 20 miles away. Vermont is a short boat ride across Lake Champlain.

As Sheriff Favreau drives through town, things are still quiet. You're in a residential area, a lot of homes very close together. Most of these people right here worked at the prison. People totally unsuspected and preparing for a beautiful weekend, not really knowing what was going on. But now the word starts spreading. Automated phone calls throughout the area.

As people hear the news, amazement turns to fear.

I almost vomited. That's how scared I am. We have a bunch of property back here with some woods and it just freaks me out that they could be running around back there. But for one employee of the prison, a woman named Joyce Mitchell, there was a special kind of fear. You'll see why very soon. We're leaving no stone unturned. They

They could be literally anywhere. As the search goes into high gear, major guests is in command. My goal was to assemble literally the best team to assist me in our overarching objective of capturing these guys and returning them to the facility. Investigators are searching these dense woods by ground and by air, launching helicopters to get that critical bird's eye view, all to find those prisoners.

But the bad guys have a head start in those very thick woods. It was always our thought they would follow either a rail bed or an old mining road or some sort of river that they could see on a map that would show them where they were going. We focused a lot on those type of areas that were clear and that you could walk on and make better distance. Six or seven hours, they could be on New Jersey getting near Virginia. They could be way out west. Stay with your partner, two-man teams.

And make no mistake. Richard Matt is the devil. These are very, very bad guys. When we come back, who are Richard Matt and David Sweat? Extremely violent. Is he a monster? Yes. And did they have help in their escape? They needed power tools to accomplish this. How did they get the power tools? From who? How one worker on the inside became entangled in their plot. There's allegations of sexual contact. Stay with us.

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25 TWENTY.

In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, the hero is a wrongly convicted man who escapes from prison. In real life, though, the hunt for two escaped prisoners. Two guilty and very correctly convicted men are on the loose. They're following more than 150 leads. At first, these mugshots are pretty much the only image for hundreds of searchers and thousands of fearful residents in upstate New York to focus on.

Until this. This is my friend Ricky Matt right here. He's a freaking crazy lunatic maniac. A chilling video surfaces, recorded in 1997. That's one of the two escapees. A younger, skinnier, but just as twisted Richard Matt, known then as Ricky. This is the South American blowgun. Recorded on Super 8 film, an acquaintance demonstrating a blowgun by firing it at Matt.

Ricky with a smile. Here we go. We're about to shoot the dart into Ricky's arm. Just listen to what he says. We're going to dip these in AIDS blood and we'll put a patent on them and we'll sell them as deadly weapons. What do you think? The camera rolls as the dart goes right into Matt's arm. Went in there, started to come out there. He doesn't even flinch. He's so good at conning people.

In one of life's countless contradictions, Matt displays talent as an artist growing up in suburban Buffalo. This is some of his later work.

But apparently his true calling was violent crime. This man has no heart, no soul to do this to another human being. Just months after this tape was shot, retired police captain Gabriel DiBernardo would be investigating Matt for murder. Disgusting. Matt was a guy who was in trouble with law enforcement from the time he was a teenager. But despite his troubles, young Ricky seemed to have no trouble with the ladies. Ricky had girls.

that were gorgeous. He settled down with this woman, Vee Harris. Today, she suffers from a debilitating illness, but back then, she suffered from Matt's violent outbursts. Yeah, he had broken ribs, broken feet, broken toes. It was bad.

V forgives Matt, though, because in their roughly 18 months together, he gave her a son, Nicholas. My mom wanted to make sure I knew who he was then, so if anyone had said something to me in the future, I wouldn't be caught off guard and not know what they're talking about. Soon, Dad would give everybody something to talk about. Richard Matt is the devil.

Lee Bates met Richard Matt at, where else? A strip club. Soon Ricky convinced him to join in a plot to rob William Rickerson, a local businessman who'd made the mistake of briefly giving Matt a job. Like many of Matt's criminal enterprises, what the plan lacked in sophistication, it made up for in brutality. Mr. Rickerson looked up at Rick and Rick turned around and punched him right in the face.

Bates says Matt tortured the 76-year-old man, sticking a knife sharpener into his ear at one point, then locked him in a car trunk and drove aimlessly for 27 hours. At different points, he'd have me pull over. I'd have to get out of the car with him. He'd open the trunk.

He would beat him to the record. Each time they opened the trunk, it got worse. He snapped his fingers all the way back and grabbing ahold of his head and snapping it. There was a pop. You don't tell Richard Matt he can't have what he wants.

Matt dismembered the body and threw it in a river. After all that, the big score? Some rings, a couple of credit cards, and not even $100 in cash. Meantime, about 200 miles away, near Binghamton, New York, David Sweat had launched his own criminal career. You know, he did larcenies here, burglaries. Unlike his future partner, Sweat is more of a thinking man's thug. It seemed like every crime that he was involved with

involved making lists and maps and planning. Sweat's transition from heist to homicide took place on July 4th, 2002. This must have been a crime that just shook this community.

It did because it was so brutal. Sweat and his cousin steal some firearms and pull into this parking lot to move the stolen weapons from one car to another. The two vehicles that he observed were parked over there facing that direction. That's when Deputy Kevin Tarsia happens to drive by. When they saw him coming, they jumped out of the vehicles and hid. Well, they shoot him and they just

Mow him right down. Deputy Tarsia is hit 15 times, but the sheriff says he wasn't dead yet. So Sweat makes sure by driving over him.

I have never forgotten Kevin and I never will. Kevin was a great man. This is a SWAT team when Kev was on the SWAT team. Christiane Ciccone-Stormann was engaged to Kevin Tarsia. She's neither forgiven nor forgotten his killer. He's a monster. There's some sort of chemical imbalance in his head. I wanted him to feel some pain.

Sweat pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty. He's sent to the Clinton Correctional Facility in 2003. A few years later, Mad Dog Richard Mack, who had finally been brought to justice himself, joins him.

The two callous killers become buddies inside the prison in Dannemora, New York. Despite their various social pathologies, they are still capable of social charm, a charm prosecutors say they would leverage quite effectively with a woman who worked in that prison, a woman who would be the key to their escape, a woman named Joyce Mitchell. What are you thinking? I'm thinking, Joyce Mitchell, what are you thinking? Stay with us.

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As Richard Matt and David Sweat remain on the outside, inside the prison they escaped, authorities are examining how they managed to pull it off. Once again, here's Gio Benitez.

Even in a bleak place like the Clinton Correctional Facility, there are ways to make doing hard time more soft. Well-behaved prisoners can earn a place in the so-called honor block. This former inmate knows. The honor block, you're allowed out of your cell majority of the day. This former guard, too. The honor block.

have what they call rec time on the flats, which is the lower level, where they can get out, watch TV. They have cooking privileges. And guess who weaseled their way to those privileges? Two role model inmates named Richard Matt and David Sweat, who earned honor block status and jobs at the prison's tailor shop. Honor block for killers? There's no honor among killers. Disgusting. He's a murderer.

He shouldn't have these privileges. According to prosecutors, a fateful bromance was building and a plot was hatching. A plot requiring the recruitment of an unlikely accomplice. That woman named Joyce Mitchell. Who is Joyce Mitchell?

Trish Mitchell's a middle-aged woman, a mother, a wife. And a civilian worker at that Honor Block tailor shop, married to another worker named Lyle. She had been working there for a period of time.

prior to her contact with Sweat and Matt. Wiley says as Sweat and Matt walked back and forth to that tailor shop, the two regularly stumbled over a sort of speed bump, eventually realizing that underneath ran a heat pipe. If only they could crawl through it, they were home free. Every day they had this layout.

of their potential escape route that they were looking at. Someone should have suspected Matt might try to escape. He'd done it before. He broke out of the Erie County Correctional Facility. He reportedly scaled the jail's barbed wire fence. Last time, he went over the wall. Prosecutors claim this time, he's planning to go under. The brazen one joining up with Sweat, the master schemer, the one who drew maps and lists for his every crime.

My guess would be that David is the operations guy. But according to prosecutors, this operation would need one smooth operator. Ricky Matt, the natural ladies man, takes his relationship with Joyce Mitchell to another level. He gives Joyce some of his paintings similar to these celebrity portraits.

Then he gives her something else. What was happening in that tailor shop? There's allegations of sexual contact. I can see how a friendship could evolve, but to go to the extent of having sexual contact, to me, is unimaginable.

Even more disturbing to visualize than a lockdown love-in with these two, Wiley says Matt talks Mitchell into helping out with the budding escape plot. The three of them were going to run off. She was going to have...

a life with either Matt or sweat and leave her family, leave her husband, leave her son. The deal was not something for nothing. While he claims in exchange for a fun filled future on the run with convicted killers, Mitchell had to smuggle in the tools they need to escape. I'm sure once they realize that they can manipulate Joyce into bringing in the tools.

That was the first step. What did she give them? Hack saw blades, drill bits, a punch tool, a couple pairs of eyeglasses that have lights on them. She later then provided batteries for those lights. But Wiley claims she had help, a guard on their unit named Gene Palmer who brought ground beef to the prisoners with the critical saw blades hidden inside. He was a cool officer down to earth. I don't think he had anything, any knowledge about what was in that meat.

Palmer says he had no idea, but admits he cut corners other times, helping Madden Sweat in exchange for inside information on other prisoners. There were times where he would allow them to go in the back of the catwalk and work on the electrical system behind their cell. Now properly equipped, Wiley says Sweat begins gnawing through the walls of Clinton Prison like a rat through ropes.

After months of nocturnal labor, it's Friday, June 5th, 2015. In the tailor shop that day, Matt allegedly tells Joyce the time has come. Told Joyce this is the day we're breaking out, meet us at the power plant at midnight. Wiley says Matt gives her pills to sedate her husband Lyle so she can make her getaway. According to Wiley, about 10.30 that night, bed check. The inmates are all present and accounted for. Lights go off.

No one has ever escaped from Alcatraz. But it's the oldest inmate trick in the book, stuffing the bed to make it appear they're sleeping. You'd think guards would have seen countless movies like Escape from Alcatraz. But according to prosecutors, the trick works, and one of the most daring escapes from prison ever attempted is underway.

And off they go, sliding past their cell walls, running down the catwalk, squeezing through the holes they'd carved in the wall and into the pipes, slithering 400 feet under the wall and emerging up via that manhole at about 11.45. Joyce is supposed to meet them in a getaway car, but the perfect plot hits its first snag.

she doesn't show up. Prosecutors guess her conscience has compelled her to back out, and Superintendent D'Amico says that may have saved her life. I'm not sure she would have lived if she would have picked him up. I really didn't see any value in keeping her once you got clear. So, I mean, she may have done herself a favor. And where was she? Joyce had checked into a local hospital after suffering a panic attack. They had total faith that she was going to pick him up at the manhole at midnight.

And when she got cold feet and didn't show up, they had to regroup. They had no plan. Just then, these two neighborhood residents are pulling up to their house on the block. And what do you see? I see a couple of guys walking across the road into my backyard. So I go look at them and I see them. I ask them, what the hell are you doing in my yard? He was like, sorry, I don't. I didn't know where I was. I'm on the wrong street.

It's all falling apart. According to prosecutors, true to form, Matt starts to freak out, but Sweat stays level-headed and convinces Matt to follow him into the woods. They duck into the darkness and disappear. I had a horrible feeling the whole time. They had absolutely nothing to lose. Two confirmed killers with at least three bodies between them. So let's go, four, three, two, one. The next morning, as the news breaks, Major Guess organizes the massive manhunt

1,600 members of law enforcement from 11 different agencies all over the country. In the air, high-tech gadgetry. On the ground, old-fashioned house-to-house searching. You had to keep it in perspective so that you didn't become overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand. The terrain is daunting, acre after acre of thick, deep woods. And this is nothing.

Now this is an easier part of the terrain compared to what they've actually had to go through. You could run into a bear's den any place. You could run into multiple wild animals. And we're not talking about difficult situations just for them. We're talking about your guys looking for those criminals. The search areas were very difficult. We're carrying weapons as well. You've got the belts with the gear on it, and we're battling the same elements.

Bad weather rolls in, along with an avalanche of leads. Cops are chasing more than 2,500 false alarms and reported sightings from Canada to Mexico. But what really concerns Sheriff Favreau is this. So this is it.

This is what you found in the house. What if the killers were to stumble into a cache of weapons? 28 long arms, over a dozen knives, and two boxes of ammunition. The woods are dotted with unlocked hunting cabins, almost all fully stocked with every provision a runaway killer might want. Food, clothing, and guns. Lots of guns.

That would have been our biggest nightmare. As the search goes into high gear, so does the investigation into the escape. From the start, officials felt it was obvious that someone on the inside helped the two jailbirds fly away. They needed power tools to accomplish this. How did they get the power tools? From who? And it's not long before prosecutors have uncovered what they call Joyce Mitchell's interesting approach to inmate relations.

Prison officials looked into whether Mitchell had a relationship with David Sweat. Headline writers are having a field day. Shaw skank redemption. There's the allegations of illicit sex and early reports that Sweat and Matt may have planned to kill Joyce's husband, Lyle. What do you make of the reports that she was trying to have you killed? It was my understanding in reviewing each and every one of her statements that Matt made the statement that they were going to kill Lyle. Whether

They felt he knew information, but I have no reason to believe that he did, based on the interviews that we've had with Lyle. As the saga stretches from days to weeks, Joyce Mitchell and Gene Palmer are both arrested. Joyce Mitchell's attorney entered a not guilty plea. And while they deny all charges, the irony is profound. The two prison workers are facing time themselves, and the two prisoners remain as free as the wind.

When we return, the unlocked cabin where the hunt heats up. We now have a shotgun. Yep. And how a bottle of booze and a single cough in the woods would blow their cover. Stay with us.

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June 21st, 2015. Prison escapees Richard Matt and David Sweat are still at large. And as the search drags on, townspeople and authorities are still on edge. Lindsay Janis picks up the story. After 15 frustrating days of false leads and dead ends, state police have nothing but egg on their face in their quest to bring Richard Matt and David Sweat to justice. We're not going anywhere.

Our plan is to pursue these men relentlessly and until they are in custody. We feel good that they're looking. There's always a patrol car out, but you can't help but be scared. Really rocky. But now, a huge break in the case, and it happens near the tiny hamlet of Owl's Head at a location so remote we had to travel by ATV to reach it.

At the end of the trail, one of those Adirondack hunting cabins that are often left unlocked and stocked with food, supplies, even booze. Manna from heaven for an escaped con on the lam. Owner John Stockwell and his Black Lab dolly were checking up on the cabin when they saw signs of unwanted activity. And challenged any of the occupants by saying, who's in there? You better come out. Who's in there? You need to come out now.

Whoever was on the back deck fled down the bank, and he could tell that because he could hear the crashing through the brush. Inside, Stockwell finds more signs that something's amiss. A misplaced coffee pot, a missing shotgun that had been hidden between two mattresses, a map ripped off the wall.

Stockwell quickly alerts authorities who find more evidence that Sweat is the careful criminal and Matt the wild card. Sweat had wanted to leave. Matt's position was no sense in leaving just yet. And if somebody intrudes upon our occupancy at the cabin,

You know, frankly, we're ready to deal with them. We now have a shotgun. Yep, we could kill them, we could take them hostage. Sweat prevailed with the logic of let's get out of here. But in their mad rush to flee the scene, hardened criminal Matt acts more like a bumbling amateur, leaving even more vital clues behind. They're getting out of Dodge as fast as they can. Items of interest that we recovered fall out of Matt's pack. Toothpaste, toothbrush, toothbrush.

razor, those kind of personal grooming items, which immediately were a hit on DNA within the next 24 hours. That must have been a good feeling. It was. It helped us sharpen our focus and certainly boosted the morale of everyone involved. Law enforcement immediately swarmed the area like ticks on a bloodhound. But this prey is wily. Police find discarded pepper shakers on the trail. Signs of an old trick straight out of Cool Hand Luke.

They were using pepper shakers to try to throw our dogs off, our canine. And to some extent, it looks like that may have worked. These are smart guys. Yes, especially Sweats. Sweats seemed to be the mastermind.

And authorities later learned that Sweat had gotten fed up with his increasingly unstable partner in crime. Now Sweat cold-bloodedly decides to ditch his hot-blooded buddy. Sweat knew that Matt was out of shape. Any of these cabins where he could find alcohol, he would drink and get drunk. As his frustration level grew, he talked increasingly about harming members of the public or law enforcement. And Sweat really apparently wanted no part of that.

Meanwhile, here at Titus Mountain, investigators relocate their command center to this ski resort that sits right next to that cabin with the incriminating evidence. And they dramatically tighten the search perimeter. And you're just trying to flush them out at this point. First thing is containment. If you can't attempt to contain them, they're going to slip through it. Then on day 21 of the manhunt, just 11 miles away from the Owl's Head cabin, there's another huge development at a different hunting cabin near Malone, New York.

This is the notorious cabin that everyone's talking about and 2020 gets exclusive access.

Inside, it's filled with hunting souvenirs and other odds and ends. But on that fateful day, the sharp-eyed cabin owner detects this clear tip-off that the liquor-loving Matt had come calling. He noticed a bottle of grape gin sitting here on the counter, and some was actually spilled on the Formica. Probably time to call the state police. And you were here in moments because your command center is just 10 minutes away. Correct. We deployed people immediately to this. ♪

Even as investigators are interviewing the cabin owner, they hear shots ring out nearby. It turns out Matt, as always operating with more bravado than brains, had fired shots at a passing vehicle on Route 30 in a vain attempt to carjack it. Tell him, tell him, tell him.

Police descend on the area like an invading army. Right in the thick of things, resident John showed up, a photographer who captures a scene resembling a military operation. They told me to get in the house, but I said no. Just a myriad of trucks and vehicles and helicopters, dogs, and teams of

soldiers and, you know, camouflage. By now, Matt has moved from that cabin to a deserted camper about 75 yards away. With the noose quickly tightening, Matt decides to hole up here for a spell. You can see there's a little bit of food in the cupboard. Yep. Food.

When you're on the run for that long, anything's wooed. Eventually, Matt leaves the camper and hunkers down here in the woods, a swamp and a ravine behind him. State police lining the road in front of him. He points that 20-gauge shotgun towards them when suddenly he coughs, betraying his position. And then they communicate that cough to the Border Patrol National Tactical Team that's actually in the wood line. They're coming up from behind where Matt is just here? Correct.

A Border Patrol agent levels his M4 assault rifle at Matt and twice orders him to drop his shotgun. The Border Patrol agent engaged inmate Matt at this location because Matt failed to comply with his instructions. At least three rounds struck inmate Matt in the head. This photo obtained by WIVB-TV shows the violent end to a violent life. After 21 days, Richard Matt has finally been brought to justice.

Developing news from upstate New York, one escaped killer dead. Killed by the border patrol. Were you disappointed that he wasn't taken alive? I was gratified that we had stopped one of them, but my immediate thought, frankly, was where's the other inmate? Where's Sweat? Where's Sweat?

Next, a race to the border. Kept the pressure all the way from the Canadian border south. Maps out, guns drawn, and a final run through an alfalfa field. How will it end? And if sweat makes that wood line, he's gone. When we return. Day 21, three shots ring out in the woods.

And for residents of the region, a deep but fleeting sigh of relief. When they caught Matt up there, I said, well, good, we're safe because they're going to get sweat. But then after two days when they didn't get sweat, I went, oh, no. Denise Yando, Tom McDonald and their dog Shasta live on a peaceful farm here in Constable, New York, some 40 miles northwest of those prison walls. That's outside the primary search perimeter.

But ever since Matt and Sweat emerged from that manhole, these two tell Lindsay Janis they've been on pins and needles. You're thinking it's logical that they could be headed this way. That's correct. Very logical. Logical because on their property sits a 14 and a half acre alfalfa field just past that tree line, Canada. Very close to the border. It's only about a mile and a half.

New York State Police Major Guest is also thinking Sweat's headed to the border and mobilizes troops there. But as we now know, Sweat is a worthy adversary. In fact, he'd prepared by reading Navy SEAL manuals in the prison library, now equipped with supplies from those hunting cabins. He had granola bars, he had pop-tarts, he had water. He's traveling at night, avoiding locals, surviving in the wilderness, even shaving his face so he looks different than this police sketch.

It's like chasing a ghost. Once again, the trail goes cold. Back at Titus Mountain, Guest continues to plot out the search area. We extended, kept the pressure all the way from the Canadian border south. His troops move down from the border and end up right in Constable. And Major Guest had guessed correctly. Sweat was there too, at one point hiding in a hunting stand like this one in a tree above them.

He had secreted himself in a hide site, a deer stand here in the town of Constable for two nights. Law enforcement searching below him while he was up in his tree stand. Lindsay Janis is with major guests as he takes us through David Sweat's last play for freedom. It's day 23. A squad car cruises past Tom and Denise's farmstead. So Sergeant Cook is driving along this road. As he's doing his job patrolling down the Coveytown Road here behind us.

Sergeant Jay Cook, a local trooper out on patrol, spots someone on the roof. He sees Sweat right about here. He does, right here. Sweat had essentially slipped through that first perimeter. I know it was a loose perimeter, but he was a mile and a half from Canada. Yes. But this crafty con got lazy.

Rather than trekking through the protective woods, he's taken a shortcut on a public road in broad daylight. He became a little more desperate as he saw the continued pressure of state police and law enforcement and took the chance and the risk of moving during the daylight because I think he could smell freedom two miles away. Freedom straight through Tom and Denise's freshly cut alfalfa field, right where he's headed when Cook comes rolling up.

By that point, sweat had actually moved into the alfalfa field by a good 20 to 25 yards.

Sergeant Cook engages in conversation, says, "Hey, stop." And Sweat says, "No, I'm good." Sweat kind of did a hand motion like this, framing his face as if to say, "What? It's not me." You know, kind of like an unsolicited denial. But Sweat was clean-shaven at this point. Correct. So he actually thought he could get away with it. And I think that's exactly why he made the facial gesture that he made, like, "Nope, you got the wrong guy." But Cook knew immediately, "I've got the right guy. This is Sweat. It's on."

Suddenly, it's a foot chase. - Bear in mind that Sweat had a good 25 yard head start on Sergeant Cook. Right about this distance is the head start that Sweat has.

You're Sergeant Cook at that location. And Cook's yelling at Sweat at this point, saying, I'm going to shoot you if you don't stop. Correct. Sergeant Cook has his gun drawn at this point. He's running full speed. So Cook sees that thick forest and knows he has to take Sweat out before he gets there. Exactly. Cook's alone, and if Sweat makes that wood line, he's gone. He has to set himself here, takes a deep breath. Cook, an expert marksman, ends the manhunt with two shots.

Troopers descend on the field. Despite suffering a collapsed lung, David Sweat has enough breath to tell his story. Almost immediately, he starts spilling. He just said he was trying to essentially make it to freedom.

Sweatt gets medical treatment and is later transferred to the Five Points Correctional Facility on the other side of the state. As for major guests, the weight of the manhunt is finally off his shoulders.

There was a huge relief knowing we had two of them now out of the public. Sergeant Cook did his job. He ended 23-day nightmare for citizens of the state of New York, and he ended it safely. Breaking news. The massive manhunt finally over. After a three-week intensive search. We're safe. Our community is safe. We appreciate everything they did. Everyone can take a collective sigh of relief.

But for those who helped the two inmates escape, there is no relief. Joyce Mitchell later changes her plea to guilty for promoting prison contraband and criminal facilitation. She's part of the plan. She's part of the escape that occurred, and she needs to be held responsible for that. Please understand I acknowledge my actions, and I'm still trying to understand why I made the choices I did. I live with regret every day and will for the rest of my life.

Mitchell is sentenced to up to seven years in prison. As for Gene Palmer, the prison guard who helped smuggle the tools for the escape, he also pleads guilty and is sentenced to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

With justice served, residents of upstate New York can return to the peace and quiet of their daily lives. We always said it would be a real good story for the North Country. I think it really brought the community closer together. I really believe in my heart that it brought the community closer to law enforcement. It was an extraordinary circumstance and the first escape in over 100 years, but one escape is one escape too many.

Every citizen did their job and they did it bravely and they did it courageously and you couldn't have a better ending. We wish it didn't happen in the first place, but if you have to have it happen, this is the way you want it to end.

This is Deborah Roberts. David Sweat was later charged with two felony counts of escape and one count of promotion of prison contraband. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to an additional seven to 14 years in prison. Sweat and Joyce Mitchell were also ordered to pay more than $150,000 in restitution for physical damage to prison property. Sweat is currently serving out a life sentence in Mid-State Correctional Facility in New York State.

Joyce Mitchell was released from prison into community supervision in 2020 after serving a five-year sentence. Since the prison break, the Clinton Correctional Facility has installed new equipment and implemented security procedures to help prevent future escapes. Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Join us on Friday evenings at 9 for all new broadcast episodes of 2020.

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